How much ground does the Sahara desert cover, in square kilometres?
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Answer
About 9.2 million km2
Only about a quarter of the Sahara is sand dunes. Most of it is bare rock, gravel plains and mountains.
How to estimate it
Picture it on a map of Africa. The Sahara stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, roughly 5,000 km, which is about one eighth of the way around the globe. North to south, between the Mediterranean coast and the Sahel, it spans about 1,800 km. 5,000 × 1,800 = 9,000,000 square kilometres, close to the size of the United States. The real figure is about 9,200,000 km2.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
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